'THE HAUNTING'..........IN THE NIGHT.....IN THE DARK.......

The Haunting (1963)   Naturally, we finish out the Halloween season with the ultimate haunted house movie and one of the BQ's all time forever favorites.....

                How to do you make a classic to scare the living bejeezus out of you?

                Behold the necessary ingredients...........


                "Hill House"   One glance at this place is enough to make you start running in the opposite direction. Brilliant black and white photography makes it look like the house is staring you down.....with nothing good on its mind......

                 Creepy Prologue History   Just the look on that woman's face before something unseen hurls her down the stairs......only a few minutes into the movie and we're already frozen in our seats. And we don't even want to remember the expression on that other woman's face as she climbs up the spiral staircase, noose in hand,  to hang herself.......

                  Mrs. Dudley The Housekeeper....played with profoundly unsettling calm by Rosalie Crutchley. Take notice of her evil little smile right after she finishes her standard "we couldn't hear you....in the night....in the dark " speech.

                   Theodora, The G-Rated Lesbian....Always amusing to listen to the 1963 dialogue nimbly dance around Theodora's sexual preference.......much like "North By Northwest" treats 'Leonard' and his 'woman's intuition'.....

                   "Whose hand was I holding??"   If this bit doesn't give you convulsive shivers, then check you pulse......fast.

                    The never seen Boom-Boom Ghost....by far the film's most inspired idea. No Special Effects wizards could ever hope to duplicate what you yourself imagine prowls the Hill House hallways,  methodically pounding on the doors........and making God-knows-what noises when it stops to lean its unspeakable bulk against the bending wood.......

                     "Wait till I tell James about this...."  What a delightful surprise to find our scholarly ghost hunting Prof is married to Miss Moneypenny herself, Lois Maxwell. And we love it when Maxwell, still crisply delivering her lines like Moneypenny, goes storming into the the most haunted room of the house.......

                     Russ Tamblyn's final line.....about what he'd really like to do with the house he'd hope to inherit. Perfect. Bone chilling.

                      No Halloween should go by without watching this movie.....5 scary stars (*****), one of the BQ's greatest FIND OF FINDS.    Best viewed with all the lights out......in the night....in the dark.....

'THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS'.............VEGGIES ON AN ALL-MEAT DIET......

Day Of The Triffids (1963)   We bow to the filmmakers of this raggedy little thriller for their sheer amount of nerve in attempting an adaptation of one of novelist John Wyndham's cataclysmic sci-fi classics......

             With no money to speak of...(possibly an even lower budget than MGM's 1960 version of Wyndham's "Village Of The Damned").....they took on a movie that opens with a spectacular meteor shower that blinds most of the world's population.......and leads to apocalyptic city-consuming fires, violent panic among the stricken blinded populace,  plane crashes, train crashes......and an ever growing infestation of ambulatory, 8 foot tall carnivorous plants armed with whip-like stingers and an insatiable taste for human flesh.......

             And the Triffids, as they're called, may only be plants, but they're smart enough to figure out that the blind humans staggering around are easy pickins'......an all-you-can-eat buffet.....a meat bar where the salad does all the eating.....

              Quite a challenge, considering they had enough of a budget to make a "Carry On" movie. But try they do......and despite the primitive, barely passable special effects, the movie exudes an immediate, unnerving dramatic power, even amid the sloppiness of its production. (Composer Ron Goodwin gets things off to a fine start with a main title theme punctuated with the dread-filled wail of the horn section...)

               In the great tradition of unlikely American movie stars who wander into low-budget, overseas sci-fi/horror, that big ole MGM musical baritone Howard Keel assumes hero duties here. Personally, when Keel was surrounded by Triffids, we would have had him break into "My Defenses Are Down" from 'Annie Get Your Gun'.......but that's just us.......

                Speaking of the low budget again......money, or the lack of it, reared its ugly head when the film barely had an hour's worth of footage in the can.  After a year's shutdown, the enterprising production re-assembled to a shoot a half hour worth's of a husband and wife scientist team stuck in lighthouse overrun with Triffids.

                 Even though the inventive Triffs figure out a way to climb up the lighthouse spiral staircase, our plucky couple stumble upon the plants' Achilles Heel.....or stalk...or leaf...or whatever...

                 And so "The Day Of The Triffids" finally slapped together enough sequences to call itself a feature length movie.....and as rickety constructed as it is, it makes for a thoroughly entertaining time for all classic sci-fi movie buffs.  For the BQ, it's always worth a fun re-viewing.

                  So we'll go green this Halloween with 4 stars (****) for our favorite voracious veggies.......a shame their filmography includes only this movie and their surprise cameo appearance inside E.T,'s spaceship.......come on, Hollywood, why not
plant these plants in a new movie.....

'THE BLOB'.......IT CREEPS AND LEAPS AND SLIDES AND GLIDES ACROSS THE FLOOR......

The Blob (1958)    .......so say the lyrics from the brief, hysterical title song, the tune written by the young, uncredited composer, Burt Bachrach......

             Back when we lived in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, our home was only minutes away from a big old barn housing the Chester Springs Arts center........once the home of a little filmmaking outfit Valley Forge Films, producers of short 16 mm movies providing moral lessons to Sunday School kids......

            Low budget shlockmeister Jack H. Harris came up with the inspired idea of employing this bunch, not to provide moral lessons, but to scare the crap out of Saturday Matinee kids everywhere with a quickie horror film.......and Paramount wasted no time in snapping it up for distribution...

             Bumping themselves to up 35 mm and color, the Valley Forge crew shot the film in less than a few weeks, working round the clock to cut down the expensive lease time on the 35 mm camera....supposedly the third shift crew members worked in their pajamas.....

              And that, folks, is how a much mocked but beloved iconic sci-fi/horror classic was born,

               You can't beat the simple, primal idea.......a single-celled, cherry-red glop from outer space oozes and rolls over folks, attaching itself like superglue then ingesting them whole.

               To us, the Blob has always loomed as the most fearful of all movie monsters........for what is the Blob but a giant metaphor for cancer.......randomly grabbing and consuming people of all ages,sizes and gender.  No wonder Hollywood wants to remake it every so often.....like the "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" with its fear of  erased identity, the Blob is also eternal.......the fear of cancer erasing us altogether.....

               Not that the execution of the film itself is anywhere near the brilliance of its premise.......but we don't mind......the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, earnest amateurism of the Valley Forge film crew coats the movie with an innocent charm soon to disappear from American movies.....

              For their hot-rodding-teens-versus-disapproving-adults "Rebel Without A Cause" storyline, the filmmakers imported from the New York stage a 27 year old struggling actor. Though still completely unknown,  Steve McQueen already possessed the temperamental, pain-in-the-ass demeanor of an established superstar.......this attitude didn't go over too well with Jack H.Harris and all the Sunday School auteurs of Valley Forge Films, but McQueen's work lifted the film above its limited ambition to go "boo!" and slip out of town....

                As you watch him play a misunderstood high school bad boy, you can knowingly smile at the easy charm and unmistakable charisma that would serve McQueen well through his long, legendary Hollywood career......

                 But enough of Steve......let us now praise the real superstar of this film....a jumbo glob of silicone with a red dye job giving a multi-faceted performance in the title role.  A bravura piece piece of performance art......especially in its signature scene, squishing its way through the projection booth portals of a movie theater to gobble the crowd below.........(in presumed panic, they run screaming out the theater......and you can have fun spotting all the
terrified moviegoers fleeing with huge smiles on their faces. Not that we blame them.......being in this movie must have been a blast...)

                 A few years back, we enjoyed a delightful "making of the Blob" tour given by that Chester Springs Arts center, loaded with nuggets of Blob trivia, some of which we shared with you in this post.......and no Halloween season should go by without visiting the cinematic 1958 Downingtown, Pennsylvania......and watch overage teen Steve McQueen do battle with "The Blob". We happily ooze, slide and glide out 5 stars (*****) a FIND OF FINDS.....

             

'X THE UNKNOWN'........HE'S GOT THE MOVES LIKE JAGGER......

X The Unknown (1956)   After their huge success with "The Quatermass Xperiment" (covered in a previous post), the Hammer horror folks wanted another Quatermass horror/sci-fi tale from writer Nigel Kneale,,,,,,,

           Kneale initially wouldn't do the deal.......already famously irked about Hammer's importing a washed up, barely sober Brian Donlevy to play Quatermass as an angry crank in the first film.....

            Undeterred, Hammer had their fledgling young screenwriter Jimmy Sangster (soon to become their prolific go-to scribe), write them an imitation Quatermass movie, complete with an American nuclear physicist facing off against an intelligent mass of radiation-gobbling goo bubbling up beneath the earth.....

             In place of Kneale's space exploration visionary, Sangster substituted Dr. Adam Royston, played by Dean Jagger with way more even-tempered humanity and wit than Donlevy's suffer-no-fools, obsessive Quatermass.....

            American politics, of all things, intruded into the film, as staunch right-winger Jagger refused to be directed by HUAC blacklist refugee Joseph Losey......so Leslie Norman, a no-great-shakes-but-gets-the-job-done-on-time Brit took over.....

              While lacking the edge-of-hysteria urgency that Val Guest brought to the Quatermass films, "X The Unknown" manages to work up it own little share of dread and suspense. And the film throws in a genuine ahead-of-its-time showstopper in its scenes of the oozing blob's effects on its victims, melting the flesh off their bones like Popsicles in a microwave.......

               Jagger's Dr. Royston makes for a less imposing but still quietly authoritative figure, as opposed to the blustering Donlevy.  When a young boy falls victim to the malignant, radioactive mud, the child's grieving father  excoriates Royston for being "not safe". Jagger humbly and
silently accepts the accusation and agrees with it. (If this were Donlevy's Quatermass, he might have spat out at the dad, "Get over it. Your kid died for Science.")

               Overall, a jolly good time for all classic sci-fi movie buffs.......with the added attractions of the forever wonderful Leo McKern as an atomic energy inspector.......and future London/Broadway musical comedy star Anthony Newley as a wisecracking Scottish soldier.....(no, he doesn't get to sing "What Kind Of Fool Am I?" as he encounters the lethal blob....) 

               It didn't melt our hearts as fast as its melts people, but we'll radiate 3 stars (***) for "X The Unknown".....maybe three-quarters of a Quatermass......           

'IT'S ALIVE'..........LARRY COHEN'S DAY CARE CENTER........

It's Alive (1974)    First off, let's just get this out....the BQ loves us some Larry Cohen......a supremely inventive, brilliant scriptwriter who crafted numerous "High Concept" screenplays long before 'High Concept'became a studio executives' catchphrase......

             Sadly, Cohen's directorial skills never quite matched the sheer outrageous imagination of his scripts.......but to to be fair, the scrappy, independent-minded Cohen worked with minuscule budgets and shot his films on the fly in real locations.

              And unlike the graduate film school navel-gazers and pretentious, no-talent posers who pass themselves off an Independent filmmakers today, Larry Cohen is a born storyteller.........and what nutty stories he could tell.

               "It's Alive" may stand as Cohen's most memorable, singular achievement......as much a landmark in his body of work as "The Nutty Professor" is for Jerry Lewis.....

                 It took Warner Brothers almost a year to realize what it had in Cohen's horror opus about the birth of a monstrous, mutant baby who murders the doctor and nurses in its delivery room, chews off its umbilical cord and goes on a killing rampage throughout Los Angeles.  After throwing it on a double feature with another horror film, Warners brought the movie back all by itself, with a catchy new ad campaign....("there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby....it's alive....")

                Audiences ate it up. How could they not fall in love with a film that kicks off with the ominous dread of a Bernard Herrmann score?  (Accompanied by the clever visual of a cluster of searchlights.....accomplished by Cohen and his friends waving flashlights around in a basement....)

               After Cohen's monster baby comes snarling out of the womb and racks up a body count, it leaves its poor shell shocked parents (Sharon Farrell, John Ryan) in various states of denial, guilt, grief, rage and ultimately....parental instinct.  Cohen always recognized and showcased the unsung talents of second-tier actors and Farrell and Ryan's work here is worthy of any mainstream, big budget studio film.  Through them, you feel all the confusion and terror first hand.....

                The film wisely restricts itself to fleeting glimpses of the baby, a truly nightmarish puppet created by make up effects wiz Rick Baker.  This "unseen" Val Lewton approach, combined with the ever present suspenseful throb of the Herrmann score serves to work on an audience's nerves and envelop the film in a perpetual aura of tragic gloom.

                 Early on in the movie, Cohen vaguely implies the baby might be nature's response to the toxic pollution spread by mankind......or like the afflicted children of  Thalidomide, a byproduct of  a Big Pharma pre-natal medication gone awry. (Whichever of those reasons you prefer, the film's wrenching conclusion gives you both finality and unease....)

                 For a great Halloween week movie night, we highly recommend you take on baby-sitting Larry Cohen's little bundle of joy......4 stars (****).... for.a few of the scary scenes here, you may need diapers more than the baby.....(and yet it's PG, so fun for all....)

'CURSE OF THE DEMON (NIGHT OF THE DEMON)'......THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS....

Curse Of The Demon (a.k.a. Night Of The Demon) 1957     As opposed to the previous post's snapshot of The Crawling Eye, the BQ's family members thought this photo of a title character would serve as more fitting insert to the "About Me"  bio.......

               Perhaps it would......especially when we feel compelled to rant about the latest perversion of the Presidency by Baby Orange........

               But enough of him......let's move on to a fictional horror....

               Director Jacques Tourneur made his horror film reputation with the darkly subtle, moody movies from the legendary Val Lewton production unit ("Cat People", "The Leopard Man", "I Walked With A Zombie")

           Those films never indulged in monster-suited stuntmen.......they cleverly manipulated your own imagination to conjure up all the unseen terrors in your mind. It's what you didn't see that jangled your nerves...

               Tourneur intended to suffuse the British made "Night Of The Demon" with the same subdued style......but was bluntly overruled by the film's producers.......

                These guys didn't title the film "Night Of The Demon" for nothin'.  The film dealt with a skeptical American psychologist (Dana Andrews) inflicted with a satanic curse put on him by a snooty upperclass twit devil worshiper (great oily, sinister work from Niall MacGinnes).  And to hell with Val Lewton subtlety......these producers insisted on a real Goddamn demon for their Demon movie.  Looks good on the posters, don't ya know.....

               And so they shoehorned in their demon, a truly nasty big beastie.......a giant, forever pissed off winged behemoth who bookends the beginning and end of the film in obvious but effective creepy, nightmarish sequences. Tourneur wasn't thrilled with the idea,but this well-rendered puppet (if you compare it to some of the other unintentionally silly 1950's monsters) doesn't harm the film at all, since the bulk of the story traffics in the director's trademark 'you-thought-you-saw-it-but-now-you-don't' jump scares.

                Tourneur raises your goosebumps to Everest level whenever he chooses to trot out MacGinness' character, an effete, reptilian snob who lives like a fabulously wealthy Lord due to his deals with the Devil.......(we imagine that raging, hellish creature he conjures up must also supply him with stock tips,  in addition to shredding any poor soul who dares to offend him......)   You don't want to miss his jolly old appearance as a Halloween party clown......

                  To be clear, the version of the movie we post about here is the full 95 minute British cut officially titled "Night Of The Demon".  We wouldn't waste our time or yours with the truncated cut,  released to USA theaters as "Curse Of The Demon".  Luckily, the DVD makes both versions of the film available if you don't consider that life is short and care to sample them both......

                   Go for the gusto, we say, and make "Night Of The Demon" a prime morsel to gobble up this Halloween week, which is exactly when the film takes place.  What more could you ask for?  An unquestioned 4 big "Boo!"s for this perfect chiller for a chilly October night. (****).....we only wish we had a autographed photo from that too cute Demon.....

             

               .


 

'THE CRAWLING EYE'........KEEP YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE CLOUDS....

The Crawling Eye (1958)    Before starting this blog, we seriously considered using a photo of this movie's creature to illustrate the "About Me" section......

            Like the title monsters, we're down to one good eye and move around awkwardly......the only difference being that the cloud we live in is more symbolic and metaphorical........as opposed to these guys, living in an actual icy cloud floating around mountaintops.......

            Also, we adamantly deny ever using a tentacle to behead unwary mountain climbers.....

            Laugh all you like at the movie's valiant but failed attempt to create, on a typical paltry 1950's sci-fi movie budget, frightening and convincing monsters. We love those bulbous, puppet-y eyeballs anyway......and apart from its creatures, the rest of the film is pretty damn good, competently acted and directed and edited for maximum suspense and action.....

            And another BQ admission: we come back to this film to renew our crush on the criminally adorable Janet Munro, that star-crossed, tragic young actress who died of heart disease at age 38....

            Munro plays a psychic lured to a European mountain resort by her telepathic contact with the Crawling Eyes, cloud-dwelling aliens attempting to adjust themselves to earth temperatures.......(and just for fun, squishing the heads off folks or turning them into walking dead murderous zombies....or we guess you'd call them I-Zombies...
)

            Without belaboring the plot mechanics, everyone left alive in the cast takes refuge in a bunker-like scientific observatory on top of a mountain........in time for the....uh....let's say less than professional looking climactic battle between the Eyes and a fighter jet.....

              Sadly for all of us who revere ridiculous movie monsters.......when the dust clears and the votes are taken.......the Eyes don't have it...

               But they live forever in our hearts and the Eyes make a wonderful cinematic candy corn Halloween treat. We'll blink 3 stars (***).......and no uploading into their cloud, if you hope to keep your heads about you......
         

             
             

'4D MAN'........NO GLASSES REQUIRED.....HE DOES ALL THE WORK.

4D Man (1959)........comes from our favorite little bunch of B-movie sci-fi/horror toilers, the hardy crew of Valley Forge Films, who assembled this mad-scientist-on-the-rampage quickie as a followup to their first big sensation, "The Blob"......(stay tuned for full BQ coverage on that one....)

              Under the guiding hand of Hollywood fast buck shlockmaster Jack H.Harris, the Valley Forge folks shot their little horrors in and around suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania.......as it so happens, only a hop and a skip away from the BQ's humble abode for many years.....before the lure of the crashing waves called to us away....

               Having endured a tad too much diva-ism from their "Blob" star, Steve McQueen, the filmmakers turned to intense Hollywood journeyman Robert Lansing to play their title role,  he of the burning gaze and craggy eyebrows.

              It's cruel karma that Lansing, who possessed charisma and rugged good looks equal  to McQueen's, never achieved superstardom. He labored away in popular TV shows and lesser films without hitting any true career jackpot........regardless, the guy was definitely movie-star material....on screen, he maintained a quite authority while looking like he could barely contain his bottled-up rage.  You couldn't take your eyes off him.

              And that makes him a perfect 4D man, a scientist who dives off the sanity board when he discovers he packs enough brain power to make him move through solid objects.......including walls and people.  This.....as Howard The Duck says......does not bode well.

              The walking-through-people part of his superpower lands 4D Man in a peck 'o trouble, since this neat trick instantly ages his victims to death, turning them into 100 year old corpses.  And the process adds a few unflattering years to Lansing too, as his cheeks wither and his rich head of hair turns that frosty white that Hollywood makeup artists use on young actors to signify the Golden years......

              Lots of cheesy fun here as the 4D man literally walks in, around and through Downingtown, Pa......the little town last seen being gobbled whole by the Blob. At one point, there's even a nod to the legendary sequence in 'Frankenstein' as the lethal Lansing encounters a little girl demanding a playmate.....(played by the destined-for-bigger-things Patty Duke, of "The Miracle Worker")

                The effects?  Not bad at all, considering it's a 1959 film shot with minimal money.  And though it might drive some viewers up the wall, we kind of love Ralph Carmichael's insistently loud big band jazz score. loaded with bongos, drum snares and screaming horns.....(after a few minutes, it starts to sound like a demented parody of Elmer Bernstein's "Sweet Smell Of Success" score)

                Like "The Blob", an ominous "?" appears next to 'The End"......and that's good news indeed for sci-fi fanboys everywhere......with so many one-dimensional movies out there, we say
it's high time for the 4D man to ooze out of the walls again. 3 stars (***).....just don't let him shake your hand....

'THE STRANGER'.........ORSON CLOCKS OUT......

The Stranger (1946)  We well know that everyone in the world has laid eyes on the DVD of this movie........someone forgot to renew the copyright. Falling into Public Domain, every video supplier had the legal right to duplicate the film and sell copies......

              Which is why you've seen a hundred different DVD versions sitting in Dollar Store bins all over the civilized world........

               Granted, most Public Domain stuff consists of ancient cobwebbed movies that were never much good to begin with. But look closer and you can strike gold in them thar P.D. hills......(the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn "Charade", almost all of Hitchcock's early output.....)

               And of course, this little gem.......in which a young Orson Welles applied his formidable acting and directing skills to a breathless, crowd-pleasing thriller......one of his few movies that became a box office success.

               Welles, however, disdained and dismissed the film through the rest of his checkered career. He never intended to chase box office dollars......he chased money only to finance personal films that could be made on his own terms with no studio interference.

                 But "The Stranger" still holds up, in the BQ's humble opinion, as one of the best 1940's imitation-Hitchcock thrillers we've ever enjoyed. In many ways, you can consider it as Welles' variation on 1943's "Shadow Of A Doubt", in its instantly compelling story of a picture-postcard American town infiltrated by unfathomable evil.

                Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler (Welles) cleverly hides in plain sight, posing as New England college professor Charles Rankin, revered by his students and on the verge of marrying the beautiful daughter (Loretta Young) of a Supreme Court justice.

                Hot on his trail comes 'Mr. Wilson' (the always dangerously intense Edward G. Robinson), a War Crimes Commission investigator  The relentless Wilson sniffs out Kindler by intentionally freeing one of Kindler's imprisoned minions, using him as an unwitting bloodhound, knowing the little creep will head directly for his master......

                 And now the real fun begins........realizing he's been hunted down at last, feeling the ground burning up beneath his feet, the feverishly terrified Rankin/Kindler strangles the minion to maintain his cover. To no avail, however........he soon finds his crimes exposed and his identity unraveled, to the everlasting horror of his young bride. (Somewhat different from Hitchcock, Welles encourages over-the-top performances right from the start to pump up the melodrama.......a virtual acting symphony comprised of Robinson's snarling, righteous anger, Young's shrieking hysteria and  many close-ups of Welles' own panic-bulged eyes.)

                  The whipped cream topping on this suspenseful dessert comes from the small town Americana setting.......a town presided over by the corpulent, garrulous drugstore owner Mr. Potter (Billy House, stealing every scene he's in)......a character who'd be right at home in either "Shadow Of A Doubt", "The Trouble With Harry", or even Bodega Bay in
"The Birds."

                 In case anyone forgot about Welles' talent as a supreme visualist, he properly finishes the film with a glorious, Hitchcockian set-piece at the top of the town's historic ornamental clock tower. Kindler/Rankin, a clock enthusiast, has only just recently repaired the mechanism, which sends life-sized, medieval, sword-wielding statues on a circular roll around the tower.

                 A ridiculous and blatantly inevitable finale ensues.......but we wouldn't have it any other way. In violent abandon, it's almost an equal to the carousel catastrophe of "Strangers On A Train".

                 All hardcore movie buffs should own their own copy of this one........and anywhere you find it, it shouldn't cost you more than a buck or two......5 stars (*****), an all-time BQ FIND OF FINDS......you never want to miss seeing Orson discover how time flies.....

'THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS' (2017)......MELISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL.......

The Watcher In The Woods (2017)    Remaking Disney's troubled 1980 horror film (covered in yesterday's post) wasn't such a bad idea.......

            But in a more perfect world, we wouldn't have the remake fall into the hands of producer Paula Hart and her actress-director daughter, Melissa Joan Hart, who spent a busy childhood as the TV star of "Clarissa Explains It All" and "Sabrina The Teenage Witch".......

           Nor would we imagine them making the film as a quick. cheap Lifetime Channel Movie.....which translates to 85 minutes of footage jammed in between 35 minutes worth of commercials.......

            To their credit (or let's just say to their common sense), team Hart wisely decided to jettison the mind-boggling dollop of science fiction in the source material, a novel by Florence Engel Randall.  Disney famously hit a creative wall in their hapless attempts at replicating a creature from another dimension, along with its bizarre habitat

             Melissa explains it all in her version by simplifying the story to a simple, easy-to-digest ghost tale, requiring minimal special effects. (And if you're shooting a made-for-TV movie for a basic cable network, "minimal" becomes your first, middle and last names....)

            That brings us to the bad stuff........the film suffers badly in comparison to the slick professionalism of the Disney original.  It's weighed down by all the usual maladies of cable movies.......pacing so slow, it comes close to still life portraiture, flat, uninspired acting and an overall look of "let's shoot the damn thing and go home and watch TV".......

             The film does score something of a coup in getting Angelica Huston to assume the Bette Davis role of the mysterious, vaguely sinister old matron pining for her vanished daughter. Huston gives good icy stares, but she couldn't possibly duplicate the classic creepiness that the aged, raspy-voiced Davis brought to the role, just by her very presence.

            We'll take a less than wild guess and predict a more appreciative audience of slumber party teen girls when the film arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray, mercifully shorn of 87 commercials for lip gloss.  (For that new generation, director Hart follows the directives of today's horror filmmakers who treat their audience like experimental lab animals......jump scares every seven minutes)

             As for us, we'll scare up 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)......BQ recommends you stick with the Disney.....with all its flaws and missteps, it's still a real movie-movie......

             

'THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS' (1980)........DISNEY HORROR? AN OXYMORON?

The Watcher In The Woods (1980)    We always planned to cover this one before Halloween.....even before we knew of a Lifetime Channel remake due for airing in a few short hours.....(you can bet we'll get to that one tomorrow to compare......)

             This film's backstory is notoriously entertaining. The floundering Disney film division, still overseen by the late Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller, desperately wanted to make a movie that didn't look like it was made in 1955.......

               They boldly stepped up to the plate with "The Watcher In The Woods", a moody, made-in-Britain mixture of mystery, ghost story and finally some incomprehensible science fiction......

                That last inserted element, the sci-fi, ultimately proved the undoing of the film and Disney's high hopes for it......

                 Apparently, (and we're taking our best stab at describing this) the film's pivotal mystery....what happened to vanished young girl......was due to her accidentally swapping places with an otherwordly, interdimensional creature. This alien being, stuck in the English countryside, prowls around the woods in point-of-view shots, shooting occasional random laser beams.

                 For the film's big finale, in which girl and creature switch back to their proper places, Disney deployed its special effects artists to dazzle the audience with depictions of the creature, a large semi-reptilian thing with a pterodactyl wingspan, as well as its bizarre home base, or planet or dimension or wherever the hell it hung out originally.

                 Disney shot several versions of this sequence, none of which seemed to make the film any more coherent. (You can watch them all on the DVD)  What's worse......and keep in mind this is long, long before CGI, the Disney special effects technicians' rendering of the alien was surprisingly slipshod and sloppy.......it looked a paper and plaster concoction you'd see on a float in a Halloween parade.  Ed Wood Jr. would have approved.

                  Discarding all these special effects,  Disney settled for letting the film hopelessly try to explain its convoluted mythology to an audience through snippets of dialogue from its grimacing, panic stricken actors.  This did not work.

                  The reaction?  An enormous, collective "huh?" from audiences who first laid eyes on it. In addition to the plot confusion, the film's scary sequences proved way too much for toddlers carted along by their parents. (The Disney marketing department, which in those days was probably more chaotic than the Trump White House, cautioned parents to go see the film themselves before taking the kiddies......to which a million parents duly muttered, ".....yeh, right...")

                  There's a ray of sunshine in all this......especially for those of us, like the BQ, who made a living as a buyer of movies for video stores.  "The Watcher In The Woods"  enjoyed a successful, resurrected life as a favorite of pre-teen and teen girls for their slumber party viewing. 

                  Far be it from us to function as the Minister Of Culture, we loaded up stores with plenty of copies.......the girls loved all the mild scares in the film and we loved the return-on-investment from the rentals.  Win-win all around.......for all we know, the slumber party gangs may have watched the movie enough times to figure out what went on in the ending.....(the VHS tapes did not include any of those deleted creature scenes)

                 We'll not go hard on "Watcher".......it's actually not a badly put together little thriller, briskly scripted and directed, respectively, by Brian Clemens and John Hough, two veterans of Hammer films and the glorious "Avengers" TV show.   Throw in Bette Davis for extra creepiness and you still have a highly watchable film, even with all its well documented flaws. 

                 From our interdimensional seaside lair, we'll shoot out 2 & 1/2 laser beams (**1/2).....would have gone for a full 3 if they'd left in one of those funky creature scenes....



                   

'THE UNINVITED'..........HAUNTINGLY ELEGANT.......

The Uninvited (1944)    Every movie buff's pre-Halloween viewing line-up must include this film.....

             Film historians might want to debate us on this, but we're reasonably confident calling this Hollywood's first full fledged try at a scare-your-socks-off, old fashioned haunted house ghost story.......

             And it's a gem.......a beautifully put together (as only 1940's Hollywood could do) example of what we call a Snow Globe movie.......existing in its own, carefully constructed little universe.......complete with its own romantic yearning  melody for accompaniment. (Victor Young's "Stella By Starlight".....more on that later)

             Like most forbidding haunted abodes of classic Hollywood,  this film's "Windward" house is primarily rendered with matte paintings, accentuating further the film's aura of a dream-like, dark fairy tale.....

            And the ghosts here (two  women, good and evil) effectively do their job of freezing your blood as they manifest themselves. The benevolent ghost, beset by tragedy and heartbreak, forlornly weeps throughout the house.

             The evil ghost, a vengeful wraith bent on driving a young girl to suicide, appears on camera exactly as you'd imagine in your worst nightmare.......first as a swirling, indefinable mist, then slowly assuming its malevolent, semi-human form without ever fully coming into focus.

             Personally, every time this bone-chilling apparition appears, we can barely contain our urge to run around the room, turning on all the lights.......

            And we'll now take a sad moment of reflection for MVP of this film, Gail Russell, playing the sweetly ethereal, tormented young girl who's both bedeviled and embraced by the two dueling ghosts......

            Russell, a shy, nervous high school girl who found herself hurled into Hollywood stardom machinery, spent her short tragic life as a deer-in-the-headlights waiting to get run over. With this film, the melodramatic demands of her role far exceeded her limited acting skills.......so she calmed herself with alcohol and continued to do so until it eventually killed her at age 36.

           As for her work in the film, her poignant innocence and beauty carried her through it wonderfully, making the film even more haunting than it already was.....our fond remembrance of Gail Russell always comes back to "The Uninvited".

          Not to forget all the other folks who made this a classic........smoothly wisecracking Ray Milland (who gets the film's best line at the end,) Donald Crisp, crisply huffy as Russell's imperious grandfather......and for extra creepiness, Cornelia Otis Skinner, as the sinister Medusa-In-Chief of a mental asylum, harboring the plot's darkest secrets.

             So this month, cook up the popcorn, turn off the lights, clutch a friend or lover tightly and invite yourself into "The Uninvited".....5 ghostly stars (*****), another FIND OF FINDS. 

               Bonus Fun Trivia, as promised:   The lovely "Stella By Starlight" played throughout the film turns up again as main title music 19 years later.......as the jazzy, big band orchestrated theme for Jerry Lewis's "The Nutty Professor".....

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS...."HE KNEW WHAT HE SIGNED UP FOR" EDITION....

             In a world where normality and sanity ruled, we could happily spend all our time blogging about books, films, TV shows.....which is why the BQ started up in the first place......

              With the blight of Baby Orange, infecting America and the world like a festering plague.......normality and sanity just ain't in the cards anymore........

               No President other than Baby Orange ever called the families of the fallen...".believe me.  And believe me......the Zombie Apocalypse is coming, let me tell you. Obama wasn't prepared for it, but I am.....believe me....."

                Baby Orange tells grieving widow of a fallen soldier, "He knew what he signed up for..."  We guess the poor woman is lucky he didn't finish the phone call with his sign-of to Puerto Ricans..."have a good time!"......not to worry....Air Force One has been dispatched to drop a roll of paper towels over her house....

               Speaking of "He knew what he signed up for..."  Excellent question for the Trumpanzee MAGA redhats.....is this what you signed up for???  Seriously?

                Baby Orange promises $25,000 to Gold Star father........the check really was in the mail.....but the at the last minute, funds were more urgently needed to pay for Mike Pence's leave-in-a-huff exit from a football game......The check is on its way.....inserted somewhere in the Publisher's Clearing House mailer....

                "I have proof"   Baby Orange does indeed have indisputable proof of every claim he makes....(including photos of Barak Obama crawling underneath the Oval Office desk to plant microphones and a whoopee cushion in the chair...)  These documents and transcripts are stored in a vast warehouse that also contains the Ark Of The Covenant, photos of thousand of New Jersey Muslims celebrating 9-11....and Baby Orange's tax returns.   Location? None of your business.

                Baby Orange invokes John Kelly's fallen son to take a swipe at Obama......and congratulates himself for a unique, singular achievement......the first President in history to drag a dead soldier out of his grave to use as a political weapon against someone the Prez doesn't like......what courage....what innovation.

                And before we go......let's dig up the dirt in the garden to watch one more slug ooze around......

                 Jabba The Movie Mogul Goes to Rehab.......Reality Check:  No amount of basking in the Arizona sunshine and hearing therapists gently murmur that waving your dick in front of pretty starlets is a no-no will ever cure Jabba The Weinstein.     We prescribe the following therapies for Jabba......for not only healing him, but to offer some amount of closure for his many victims as well.....
1.  A running belly-up leap on to a pre-soaked slip -n slide mat placed perpendicular to one of the walkways overlooking the Grand Canyon....
2,  A lengthy stay among a state or Federal prison's general population.......where Jabba can share a cell with a 310 pound ex-biker who'll smile as he tells Jabba, "You gonna be my own little Gwyenth Paltrow...."
3.  A all-expenses paid flight to North Korea......and handed over to the tender loving care of a prison Medical team skilled in the treatment of....uh....botulism....

            Enough madness and misery for one day. Read a good book.....enjoy a favorite film. That's our prescription.....

'CELL'.........TO HELL WITH 'CELL' AND ALL ZOMBIES......

Cell (2016)    Enough.  Stop. Cease. Desist. 

            We'll waste as little time possible discussing this movie........everyone already knows it's a botched, worthless wreck........it crawled out of the woodwork to live out its useless life on streaming and direct-to-DVD.

            It plunders one idea from a lesser Stephen King book......a cell phone signal that turns everyone on their phones into gibbering, rampaging phone-zombies, sprinting, screeching and killing....blah, blah, blah. John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson wander through phone-zombie dystopia, slaughtering assorted phone-zombies,,,,blah, blah, blah.....

            We're now done wasting words on the movie. But in those few paragraphs, we feel we put in more effort in writing about it than the filmmakers ever did in making it.  Zero stars (0). Hasta La Vista, 'Cell'..... You won't be back......

            And now to our main topic of this post.....of which 'Cell' painfully reminded us.

            To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, from any of his movies........we are f***ing sick to death of all these motherf***ing movie and TV shows about all these motherf***ing zombies......if we see one more mother****ing movie about mother****ing zombies, we're going to pray that all the mother****ing writers and directors who make mother****ing zombie movies are the first ones who get their intestines pulled out during the mother****ing zombie Apocalypse......

            Thank you, Sam.

             Keep in mind, we didn't always feel this way. When zombies started chomping their way into the movies, we got a kick out 'em like everybody else......the George Romero films, the way, way out there Italian knockoffs, with underwater zombies eating sharks. Juicy fun for all......

              But it's endless.......and the sheer amount of Zombie Apocalypse overkill makes us want to roll our eyes so far upward, you only see the milky whites......just like zombies.

               The BQ hereby declares our freedom from ever sitting through any more zombie crapola.....no more zombie comedies, zombie romances, zombie war movies,......no more classic book zombie mashups........if they make 'War And Peace And Zombies' or 'Herbert Hoover, Zombie Hunter'.....count us out.

                Memo to writers and directors.......IF THE ONLY STORY YOU CAN TELL INVOLVES DEAD PEOPLE CHASING AFTER LIVE PEOPLE TO EAT THEM.......SIGN UP FOR CREATIVE WRITING CLASSES AND LEARN HOW TO TELL NEW STORIES.....

                Pardon us while we polish up our own zombie screenplay.......in which we plan to have someone yell out, "If you're all so hungry, why don't you eat each other?".........which they do.




           

           

'BRIDES OF DRACULA'.........YOUNG DRAC'S A MOMMA'S BOY......

Brides Of Dracula (1960)  Actor Frank Langella's impossibly handsome,  dashing, hunka-hunka-burning-teeth Dracula was considered quite the breakthrough in 1979........but let's properly credit Hammer Films with giving us the first heart-throb bloodsucker, way back in 1960.

            David Peel, with his swirling, impeccably styled blonde locks making him look like he's wearing cake icing on top of his head, became the George Lazenby of Draculas....... given a one shot bite at the role before Christopher Lee could be permanently wooed back to the blood bank.....

             Even better, the film's screenplay set up a lurid, depraved backstory for Peel's male-pinup Dracula......re-inventing him as some sort of romantic, male Rapunzel, chained up in his castle tower by his haughty, aristocratic mother. (Martita Hunt).

             Momma blames herself for Sonny Boy's conversion to a vampire, implying she let him hang around too much with the Transylvanian jet set. But like any mom, she loves him enough to always provide him with snacks........letting him dip his incisors into pretty young things she invites for overnight stays........thereby turning the castle into a gothic Bates Motel.

             But this time Peel works his wiles on the latest guest (Yvonne Monlaur), convincing her to set him free......and in in a move that left intellectual film critics howling with delight, Peel singles out Mommy as his first official free-at-last victim, leaving poor Martita Hunt with fangs to go along with her arthritis.....

              Our swoon-worthy Dracula wastes no time, turning himself into a huge bat that looks like a Stealth bomber that skimmed an oil slick.......he flaps right over to a girls finishing school for an all night, all-you-can-bite buffet......

             Never fear......though Christopher Lee may have temporarily deserted Drac-dom, Peter Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing shows up with plenty of holy water, crucifixes and ready to administer tender loving vampire therapy with a wooden mallet and stakes.

              Much Hammer goodness to sink your...uh...teeth into here, including the insanely giggling Freda Jackson, functioning as a vampire nanny.  Ripe color, pulsating nervous music, voluptuous Hammer starlets waiting to get their necks perforated......pure Halloween heaven.

             And with young Drac disrespecting his mother, it's the only Hammer film that, at the time of its release, critics referred to as a mixture of Tennessee Williams and Bram Stoker.  You can debate that among yourselves if you like.....as for us, it's just bloody fun. 3 pints of AB-Negative....(***)
           

'VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED'.......... LETHALLY BLONDE....

Village Of The Damned (1960)   It never ceases to amuse us how long the genres of horror and science fiction remained incarcerated in their own low-budget ghetto by all the major studios.......with rare exceptions ("The Day The Earth Stood Still", "Forbidden Planet") no Hollywood mogul would ever commit big bucks and studio artistry to movies featuring monsters, robots, aliens and flying saucers......

           Looking at studio fare today however..........an overpowering "be careful what you wish for" feeling comes over us.

           Now we have a steady diet of bloated, 2 & 1/2 hour, multi-million dollar budgeted films with monsters, robots, aliens, spaceships and assorted people in expensive Halloween costumes hurling each other into buildings......

            So let us once again heap high praise on the writers and directors of sci-fi/horror films who created wondrous, unforgettable movies without benefit of 150 million dollars, 300 CGI digital artists and a toxic sound design meant to drown out both the dialogue and the background score......

            Such as this one......

            MGM snapped up rights to John Wyndham's novel "The Midwich Cuckoos" while it was still in galleys........but when it came time to produce the movie in England, the studio forked over a grand total of $200,000 for its budget.

            Yes, you heard that amount right. Today, it wouldn't even pay for the "Wonder Woman" metal bracelets on Gal Gadot's wrists......

             No matter. Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and director Wolf Rilla had everything they needed to create an instant classic........a sleepy, bucolic English village, a superb cast and one simple, brilliant special effect that forever implanted the film in the memories of everyone who saw it.......

             Re-christened "Village Of The Damned", Silliphant and Rilla efficiently streamlined Wyndham's brilliantly iconic idea of women around the world impregnated via remote control alien transmissions.........and forced to give birth to strangely gifted,  golden-haired emotionless children.

              The otherworldly kids colonize themselves like a hive of single-minded insects.......and like killer bees or fire ants, they ruthlessly defend themselves when they feel threatened, seizing control of the far weaker minds of us earthlings with a deadly hypnotic glowing of their eyes......(that ace special effect we just mentioned....)

               Hollywood had already cautiously dipped its toe into the evil-child genre with 1956's "The Bad Seed"......but to satisfy the Production Code, Warner Brothers had to literally call down the wrath of God on Patty McCormick, and in the epilogue, bring her back from the dead long enough to spank her.

             But the silent,  bewigged blonde tykes of "Village Of The Damned", led by unnaturally calm Martin Stephens, were way more disturbing and unsettling in their creepy unity than Patty could ever achieve with her rants and tantrums.  These kids didn't have to get mad.......all they needed to
do was stare at you to get even......

             Even within the limited space of its brief 77 minutes,  the film takes its time to to carefully build up the suspense and terror.  The current crop of puffed-up, pretentious "artistes" who force audiences to sit through punishing, bloated running times should be forced to sit down and study the amazing economy of this film and its editing.

             For this particular village, the BQ's eyes always glow bright with 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.  For these crisp, October, pre-Halloween days, you couldn't ask for more perfect viewing.....remember to...."beware the stare!"

           

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.......EXCLUSIVE TO BQ! HARVEY WEINSTEIN'S REHAB SCHEDULE!

               Only we at BQ can provide you with this hot scoop.......a copy of the day-of-events stolen from the Sexual Rehabilitation Facility currently treating ex-mogul, ex-Motion Picture Academy Member and his current wife's ex-husband.....Harvey Weinstein......

7:00 AM   Breakfast of Taco Bell Takeout followed by enema administered by Rose McGowan.....

8:00  AM   Forced viewings (with eyes clamped open) of "The King's Speech" and "The Iron Lady"

12:00  PM   Prep for penis electro-shock therapy.......

1:00    PM   After staff finally locates penis, administering of electro-shock therapy:

2:00    PM   Fitting of special sandpaper-coated gloves from Home Depot

2:15   PM    At gunpoint, enforced masturbation with Home Depot gloves......

3:00   PM    Conference call with brother Bob to discuss new names for the Weinstein Company....including  "Blameless Films", "Never-Knew Productions", "Tippi 'N Hitch' Inc."

4:00 PM     Simultaneous therapies.....six Rose McGowan administered enemas during three consecutive forced viewings of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's "By The Sea",,,,,

10:00   PM   Bedtime......with former Academy Award ceremony tuxedo allowed as security blanket.....

'SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES'........DISNEY GOES "BOO!".....BARELY

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)   Long, long ago, beloved and revered author Ray Bradbury envisioned this story as a film for Gene Kelly to direct.....

           If only it had happened.........for who better to bring Bradbury to the screen than a dancer-choreographer.......who could potentially find the visual equivalent of Bradbury's nimble, sprightly prose.

           Alas. Not only did "Something Wicked This Way Comes" land at the wrong studio, Disney, but at the worst time for Disney.......a studio adrift, swirling in failure and uncertainty as it struggled to survive in an ever-changing movie marketplace.

            Disney's tentative steps to compete in the mainstream met with rejection and disaster, including their sci-fi epic "The Black Hole" and their first misbegotten, botched attempt at a horror film, "The Watcher In The Woods". 

             "Something Wicked..." followed in that sorry tradition, with Disney executives second-guessing, re-rigging and tinkering the film into oblivion. It's sadly telling that when it came time for these films to appear on video, Disney sold them off to the Anchor Bay label, like unwanted orphan children.......

               We can only speculate that if this project had sat a few years until it fell under the umbrella of the newly revitalized Disney led by Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, it might have gotten the creative tender loving care it deserved.

                Under the mismanagement of early 80's Disney, Bradbury's novel, a dreamlike mixture of whimsical nostalgia and horror, got flattened, cheapened and made to look like a quickie made-for-TV movie. Last minute attempts by Disney animators and special effects staff to hastily smear cartoonish visuals on the footage only served to heighten the overall mediocrity of what they were trying so desperately to save.......

                The bright spots..........Jason Robards as the elderly librarian tormented by his roads-not-taken......that walking talking icon Royal Dano as the lightning rod salesman......Jonathon Pryce as the smoothly demonic Mr. Dark......and in a surprising flash of brilliant casting, Pam Grier as the seductive Carnival Dust Witch......

                  The low spots..........pretty much everything else, including the two untalented little shlubs picked to play the film's leads.  Eisner and Katzenberg, we think, might have taken the trouble to recruit some truly gifted child actors.  But the fading, exhausted regime overseeing "Something Wicked..." settled for generic central casting kids, further wounding the film.

                Always depressing, posting about such a  painful, missed-opportunity movie..... for Ray Bradbury alone, we'll scrape up 2 stars (**)..........Memo to remake-crazy Hollywood execs.......hey, guys, how about this one?

           

'COLOSSAL'..........A MONSTROUS PAIR REALIZES THEY'RE SEOUL-MATES........

Colossal (2016)    We flat out loved this.......

              This is the kind of film we hope for whenever we take the risk of sitting down to watch some off-the-beaten-track independent movie.

               Steep odds to expect a gem. If you've checked out our recent posts on Indie films, you know that most of the recent ones we suffered through were comparable to having hot needles driven through our eyes.......

               Compared to them, "Colossal" comes across as a goddamn masterpiece.

                How to explain this movie........well, we could go all snarky. And say things like 'try to imagine "Pacific Rim" if it had been written and directed by the princes of Mumblecore, the Duplass brothers...."

                We will say that we're in total of awe of writer-director Nacho Vigalondo. Anybody with the artistic balls to blend a boilerplate dysfunctional Indie relationship drama with stomping, roaring Kaiju creatures tearing up South Korea.........from now on we'll go out of our way to see this guy's work whenever it surfaces.

                 A huge BQ Best Actress nomination to Anne Hathaway, committed and talented enough to breathe life into that most tiresome of Indie archetype characters........the wasted, Millennial slacker who goes crawling back to their rural hometown after abject failure in New York City.

                 And a surprising (to us) BQ Best Actor to Jason Sudeikis, who takes his typical lightweight-friendly-guy-next-door persona and deepens it, darkens it into a performance that's dangerous, borderline frightening and ultimately sad and pathetic.

                Warning......we're about to spill the premise here, which we absolutely do not consider a spoiler since it's what the whole freakin' movie is about....

                 Hathaway and Sudeikis, to their astonishment, amusement and horror, discover that the two gigantic entities wreaking death and destruction in downtown Seoul, a reptilian thing and a robot........are nothing more than solidified projections of their own depression and resentful anger.

                 When they drunkenly stagger around a playground in their small town, the two monsters, like doppelganger marionettes, do likewise in Korea.....

                 And oh what a bummer for the Seoul populace......as the leviathan stand-ins for Hathaway and Sudeikis squish them in the streets.....

                  A gloriously outrageous concept, with some outrageously funny sequences. This movie stunned us with the sheer craziness of the way it managed
to mock its flawed characters while still humanely dealing with them.

                   Enough said. We roar out 4 stars (****).....and recommend you have yourself a colossal good time with "Colossal"

'SLEEPING BEAUTIES'.........THE KINGS OF HORROR PUT WOMEN TO BEDDY-BYE......

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King (2017)   We enthusiastically count ourselves among Uncle Stevie's Constant Readers.....so we'll admit we dive into every new King book with high hopes of loving it to pieces.........

            Nope. Sorry. Not this one.......

            Co-written with his novelist son Owen, it falls into the same category as the "The Stand" or "Under The Dome".......a massive, lengthy Apocalypse, heavily populated with a teeming cast of characters that almost requires its own mini-phone book to list them all.

             But this is no fundamental good vs. evil tale.....it's a huge boiling-over pot of social issues, a shapeless, mostly directionless mess swirling around the eternal clashes, collisions and unions between men and women.

              The King Boys firmly fall on the side of females.......as they imagine how our current world would handle a supernatural affliction that not only puts the women on earth into a deep slumber, but cocoons them like insects in white webbing. 

               Any man foolish enough to tear away this self-generated shroud does in fact wake up his sleeping beauty, turning her into an insane murderous zombie for a few minutes until she goes back to sleep and re-cocoons. Oops...so much for a true love kiss....

               This plays hell with the global social structure and before you know it, the men of the world commence behaving like the crazed, torch-wielding villagers in "Frankenstein", setting fire to women napping in their plain white wrappers.......

                Yes, it's a whole lot to swallow.......and we hate to say it, but the book isn't very good at making any of this convincing.......

                 The Kings place their Ground Zero in Dooling, West Virginia, where the whole crazy shebang appears to be administered or overseen by an immortal, beautiful female entity named 'Evie'. Like many King otherworldly creatures, she possesses enormous powers and confounds one and all with her pop-culture wisecracking. (She might have existed for eons, but still does a mean John Wayne imitation....)

                  Evie's patter makes for some funny stuff in the book, as do the rest of the enormous cast of Dooling townsfolk.......a collection of the usual King suspects.........a few benevolent good-hearted souls and a slew of morons, bullies, wife-beaters, drunks, and assorted people in serious need of enforced anger management. (And as any King Constant Reader knows, the very worst of this bunch will somehow end up in positions of authority, the better to cause more tragic violence....)

                  Halfway through the book's 700 plus pages, the story's mythology expands and deepens to hammer home the Kings' premise that women are inherently good and men are the true architects of hell on earth........but it comes off like a lumpy mixture of stuff gleaned from old childrens' storybooks.....

                 And just in case we didn't get the point of all the man/woman comparisons,  the Kings concoct a finale that reads like their own spectacularly gory version of "The Illiad"......with the ever mysterious, unknowable Evie as the contested Helen Of Troy, awash in a sea of crushed broken bodies.......

                 We can't do much jumping up and down about this one...........it's a long, slow read with generally unsatisfying payoffs.  We couldn't even rouse ourselves through those final pages when the Kings dole out happy, sad or tragic fates to their many characters......like Vegas blackjack dealers tossing out random cards.

                  As much as we wanted to adore this, we'll yawn out 2 stars (**) for "Sleeping
Beauties"......rare for a Stephen King epic, it barely kept us awake.....

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.......WHITE HOUSE DAY CARE EDITION........

              A few pundits have begun to ponder a question that's been on everybody's mind for a while......(it's been on ours since Baby Orange rode down his golden escalator to announce his candidacy)........

               To put it plainly.........how much longer can the United States and the world endure the hellish insanity of having Baby Orange in the White House, with his tiny, itchy fingers close to the nuclear codes?

                We find ourselves starting to sympathize more and more with fictional characters in horror films, living through 90 minutes of anxiety and sheer terror of sudden death at any moment......

                Unlike them, our horror movie is real.......and far from ending in a tidy 90 minutes, it drags on, day after exhausting day. New Tweets....new scandals.....new outrages........new infantile behavior.......and always, a fresh batch of lies.

                It's as if George Orwell's Ministry Of Truth from "1984" has materialized in front of our disbelieving eyes and ears......

                 We've lived through our share of dark times (and we don't claim that as some kind of remarkable achievement....it happens to everyone who lives long enough)....and we always thought 1968 was the most horrendous year we ever survived.......RFK and MLK slaughtered, the Democratic convention riots, the raging, unpopular Vietnam war, all of it capped off by rise of our Crook-In-Chief, Richard Nixon......

                  The history of our lifetime couldn't possibly get any worse than 1968, could it?

                   Yes it could.

                   We now have a country and a world at the mercy of  a man with the mindset and maturity of a spoiled toddler with a full diaper........an individual who's no more fit to hold the office of the President than our daughter's pet goldfish........(in fact, we take that back,since the fish probably has a higher I.Q.) 

                  Or, to quote the immortal and terribly true words of our current Secretary Of State......a fucking moron........

                   Again, it begs the pundits' question.....can we survive another three years of such a vile, odious, and virtually inhuman creature posing as a President?   Can the very fabric of America and its values withstand being ripped to shreds on a daily basis for so long?

                   Honestly?  Who knows? We sure don't.

                  Back when Dan Rather was a CBS anchorman, we remember the laughter and ridicule heaped on him when he tried ending each of his newscasts with what he felt was a profound, heartfelt watchword........'courage'.

                   Okay, it backfired on him, cause it just sounded like Dan becoming pretentious and full of himself......which he unmistakably was.  And he quickly dropped his watchword......lost his "courage", you might say.

                   At the risk of sounding pretentious ourselves......we're picking the word again......because given the daily headlines, it seems the only proper way to end this post.

                   Courage.

                 

               

                 

'633 SQUADRON'......... . THE VERY FIRST ATTACK ON THE DEATH STAR......

633 Squadron (1964)   It's always a comforting pleasure to return to this movie......the first of a series of medium-budgeted World War 2 adventures pumped out by United Artists throughout the 60's and early 70's......

             First, all hail composer Ron Goodwin......nobody did rousing military scores like this guy. The sight of blue skies and British Mosquito planes in battle formation coupled with Goodwin's blasting trumpets and horns can make you rush out of the house to sign up with the RAF...

             Next, this movie knows what we all want to see in a WW2 film.......loads of Nazis getting machine gunned, stabbed and blown up.  Remember, this is back in the good old days, when the whole civilized world understood that Nazis are evil to the core.......a simple concept still easily grasped by everyone except the current, temporary President of the United States......

             And key to these movies......the impossible, near suicidal mission. This one tasks our squadron of beyond courageous pilots to fly low through a Norwegian fjord and drop bombs on a huge chuck of mountain that overhangs a German rocket fuel factory.  If they drop enough bombs, they literally move mountains.........and the factory finds itself between rocks and a hard place....

             Our group, led by an easy-going but stalwart Canadian (Cliff Robertson) gets some first hand knowledge of their target from a freshly escaped Norwegian resistance fighter. (George Chakiris). Chakiris later returns to Norway to rally his forces to take out the fjord's anti-aircraft guns before Robertson and his flyboys arrive in force........but he's promptly captured and falls into the hands of this movie's version of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS......you know this bitch means business.....she wears a tie and keeps her black SS jacket draped over her shoulders.....

             Interesting plot point here......Robertson than gets the order to bomb the Gestapo HQ in Norway before poor expendable tortured Chakiris spills the beans to Ilsa about the big mission.....thereby blowing up Chakiris and the Nazi Troll-Lady together......(ironic, cause this film features Donald Huston as an RAF Group Captain.......in "Where Eagles Dare", Huston offers the exact same "why-don't-we-just-bomb-the-hell-out-of-everyone-and-be-done-with-it" solution and gets promptly chastised by his superiors with a withering..."there are certain niceties to be observed when dealing with our allies"......in '633 Squadron', evidently those niceties don't apply to Norwegian guys...)

            We finally get to what we've all been waiting for, as Robertson and his squadron fly into the fjord and a hail of lethally punishing anti-aircraft machine gun fire. Special effects are par for the era with extensive use of miniatures, animated explosions and fuzzy blue-screen compositing......but with Goodwin's pounding score and the swift editing, the sequence still thrills and stirs us......

             And we'd bet our 'Star Wars' action figures that '633 Squadron's climactic battle also caught the imagination of young teen George Lucas when he first saw it.......since the sequence unfolds like a World War 2 precursor to the X-wing fighters attack on the Death Star in "Star Wars: A New Hope"...

             A rousing good time and one of the BQ's all time faves......we'll fly over this one and drop 4 stars on it (****) .......superb adventure backed by a classic score.

             

             

'THE STEPS'.........ASSEMBLE-IT-YOURSELF DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY WEEKEND MOVIE......

The Steps (2015)  We don't want to spend any more time on this movie than the people who slapped it together spent writing and directing it......

             Big family get together.......long simmering anger and resentments.......awkward, embarrassing physical slapstick for one or more family members........hidden truths revealed!......closure for old grudges........."we're all assholes, but at the end of the day we're family, right?"........hug, hug.....

              We almost slipped into a coma writing all that.......try sitting through it.....

               But oh sweet Lord, the friggin' houses in these 'family weekend from hell' movies........that's the one thing they all share...........stunning 'Architectural Digest' houses that you and I will never experience outside of flipping through doctors' office magazines while waiting for our Colonoscopy,  watching HGTV on rainy Saturday afternoons......and suffering through movies like "The Steps"....

              The plot? Must we?  In a tiny nutshell...... two thirty-something professional failure siblings summoned to rich old daddy's sumptuous lakeside Architectural Digest house.....to meet daddy's new hot-to-trot wife and....surprise, surprise....their three new grown step-siblings for Ms. Hot-To-Trot's previous marriages.......

               Ole Daddy wants everyone to quickly bond over the weekend, since he and Hot-To-Trot plan to adopt an adorable little Chinese orphan girl.......and the whole Fam needs to make a good impression on the Social Services adoption worker who's showing up with the toddler on Monday morning.......

                 Hilarity and heartbreak ensue........we kid you, of course. What really ensues are the filmmakers exhausted attempts to slavishly imitate or reproduce every creaking, worn out 'dysfunctional family weekend' plot device you've ever seen......or they've ever seen....

                  By the time we come to the arrival of the Adoption Lady and the Chinese tyke, we're in the realm of pure fantasy here.......because in the real world, any sane responsible Social Services person, upon seeing this family, would throw a protective blanket over the kid's head, scoop her up and flee for dear life. 

                   1 star (*).....for the house only.  For everything else....zero.

'BEATRIZ AT DINNER'........IMMIGRANT VS. UBER-TRUMP.....NOT AS MUCH FUN AS YOU'D THINK...

Beatriz At Dinner (2017)   60 per cent of this is a barely watchable, typical Indie film slog, a movie in love with its own pseudo-artistic obtuseness.....

            But oh boy does it snap to life like a defibrillated heart attack patient when it finally arrives at its whole raison de'tre.......a crackling collision of personalities, cultures and mindsets when an emotionally wounded Mexican immigrant, Beatriz (Salma Hayek) ends up sharing a dinner table with a rapacious, entitled real estate tycoon (John Lithgow), who functions as a Macy's Parade balloon version of Donald Trump.

             Beatriz, a massage therapist at an alternate medicine cancer center, still regularly visits the fabulous California mansion of a wealthy couple, Sarah and Grant (Connie Britton, David Warshofsky) whose daughter she helped heal from Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

               After providing a therapy session for Sarah (they've established a faux-friendly, Plantation Master & House Slave relationship), Beatriz's car breaks down, with no hope of a tow truck any time soon.  Expansive in her condescension, Sarah invites Beatriz to stay for a formal catered dinner.....to which they've invited the architects of their latest lucrative real estate deal......

              Arriving with their trophy wives in tow come young exec Alex (Jay Duplass) and the notorious Doug Strutt (Lithgow), the king of all toxic, greedy, environment-destroying con-man developers.  (We're surmising that screenwriter Mike White borrowed Strutt's name as a homage to Martin Gabel's piggish, outraged businessman from Hitchcock's "Marnie")

              The characters of Strutt and Alex look and sound like they were Frankensteined together from generous chunks of Trump and his equally loathsome Mini-Me, Don Jr.......

               Lithgow, however, is too skilled and gifted an actor to settle for an easy "Saturday Night Live"-type caricature.  He deepens and digs into Strutt, creating a fascinating, fully dimensional view of a predatory monster........unlike the clueless Trump, Doug Strutt  carries himself with a sardonic self-awareness of his evil nature and his place in the world.

               For a few electrically charged scenes, Strutt meets his match in Beatriz, a woman who's spent a lifetime absorbing the pain and sorrow of her patients, as well as her own traumatic youth.....(her family and home were possibly ripped asunder by one of Strutt's hotel projects).  Hayek shines brilliantly here, portraying a woman who's both warmly empathetic and an annoying, scolding, sanctimonious bore.....all at the same time.  Couple that with Lithgow's smooth, smarmy ice-cold bonhomie and you've got the makings of a world class epic showdown.

               In the couple of  Clash-Of-The-Titans scenes they're allowed, Hayek and Lithgow don't disappoint......you'll alternately squirm, laugh and gasp as you watch them. Lithgow's Strutt, unlike the thin-skinned, whiny toddler he's based on, has a hide tougher than the dead Rhino he hunted and killed in Africa, whose picture he proudly displays to a horrified Beatriz.  Beatriz, with all of her righteous humanity and broken-hearted disgust, can't ever penetrate the invincible force field of Strutt's self-satisfaction and ego......(Strutt would never waste time tweet-storming Beatriz with insults.......her rage washes over him like a mild rain shower...)

                 There might have been one amazing, incredible movie about these two characters......but it sure as hell isn't "Beatriz At Dinner".  Major portions of its running time get frittered away in the usual laborious Independent film tropes of artful camera shots that exist only to load the film up with artful camera shots.....

                  By the time the film's final moments collapse into pointless visual gibberish, you realize you've been had.......the filmmakers weren't out to tell a compelling story about these people..
....they only hoped to suck up awards from easily impressed film festival juries.....

                  We'll serve up 2 stars for this dinner (**),strictly for Hayek and Lithgow.......a real shame....these two and their carefully crafted characters deserved a movie worthy of them.